


Glass Houses

by Andraste



Category: Ultraviolet (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-04-24
Updated: 2000-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-09 09:18:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andraste/pseuds/Andraste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't enjoy living like a fish in a tank.  Even if we don't have the same functions and vulnerabilities to hide as humans do, no-one likes to be stared at."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glass Houses

I don't enjoy living like a fish in a tank. Even if we don't have the same functions and vulnerabilities to hide as humans do, no-one likes to be stared at. My guards try not to look at me. They pretend not to hear me when I speak. That would have been intolerable, when I was human. I don't mind much now. If anything, it amuses me.

I've been in here some time now. I can tell by counting the days, or rather the nights. I feel the sunset pull at me. Soon I will lie down and sleep. Or, not sleep. Hibernate, perhaps. I never dream any more, which is, in many ways, a relief. They leave the spotlights on twenty-four hours a day, and although I don't complain, it bothers me. We instinctivly seek the darkness, just as humans long for light and warmth.

There is no need to hide from this sun in this prison cell, of course. In this day and age many of us work the daylight hours through indoors, shielded behind dark glass. I have little to do but sleep.

It passes the time when they are not cutting me up.

It's been three days since they pumped allicin into my cell to measure my reactions. I still sting all over. My lungs burnt even though I no longer breathe. I don't know if they learnt anything they didn't already know. What is there to know except that it poisons and paralyses? Did they do it, perhaps, just to see me helpless and writhing on the floor, to reassure themselves that I am still their tame caged bird?

They offered me blood again today. Served, still warm, in a plastic bag. We can't feed like that. Or, rather, we feel like you would feel if you were - forgive the image - drinking vomit. It might keep you alive, but you would only do it as a last resort.

I am not that hungry yet.

They've come to observe me again, perhaps to contemplate their next round of tests. They always call me "it", these days, and quite right they are. I never realised, when I was human, how the slow pump of pheromones and hormones shaped my behaviour. I can see those subtle, hidden chemicals twisting them now. I dissect all their hidden motivations, including the one that makes them refer to me as if I were an animal, or an object. They rarely call me by name.

Names are power. We have had many, over the centuries, and have been called both monsters or dead gods. I almost wish I had been crossed over in the days when we were 'demons', but I haven't heard that word spoken aloud for a long time, even in clerical circles. People are embarrassed by religion in this day and age.

Those old, fearful names are gone. These days, they seek to diminish us with language rather than to build us up. Dr. March would have given us a tidy scientific name by now, if she thought we were a species rather than the hapless hosts of a virulent disease. Homo sanguinis, it would be, I believe. Code V is a charming bureaucratic euphemism. 'Leech' is their favourite, though. It is a good word; a way of calling us lowly black worms. Parasites.

We are not parasites. We are predators. You know this.

You do not quite understand what it means, however.

You call us cold and unfeeling, but how can any hunting animal be incapable of taking pleasure in the chase and the kill? Perhaps you fear us because we show you the animal you used to be combined with the cold god you might become.

We feel hunger.

The time after the crossing is deceptive. You fool yourself that you're the same person you were before, that your motives are pure and good, that you will be different from all the rest. The hunger grows slowly, so slowly. I used to have a lot of ideas when I was a human being, about justice, and God, and right and wrong. They do not matter now.

I am hungry.

Hungry enough to watch Angela March with undue care as she moves behind the glass. I wonder weather she's showing her neck deliberately, another kind of test. I think of how the man I used to be might have reacted to that. He would have been embarrassed, I think. But I know about other shades of red now. Eventually, she can't ignore my eyes on her skin, and looks me in the eye.

"Pearse? Are you all right?" she says, uncertainly, in a poor imitation of the concern I once heard in her voice.

I smile at her, trying to remember how it felt when it was genuine. Trying not to show too many teeth.

"I am . . . well," I reply.


End file.
